Oscar Peterson & James Brown

[Annie Grieshop]

Last night, NPR aired a short tribute to James Brown, who died a year ago.
In one of the clips of him talking about his music, he said that he used all
the instruments as part of the rhythm section, regardless of their other,
melodic uses.  (I'm paraphrasing it badly, but it's way obvious in funk,
once you listen for it.)

Thinking about that and then listening to Oscar Peterson, I was again struck
by how many kinds of instrumentation are available from a piano.

Personally, I think great jazz players use the instrument's potential more
fully than others do, although improvisation and the ways jazz groups work
together has something to do with that.  And the YouTube video of Mr.
Peterson was a wonderful example of how to do all that.  Thanks so much for
the link!

Duaine, you're missing the point.  And being rude, too.

Annie Grieshop


> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Delacour [mailto:JD at Pianomaker.co.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2007 9:35 AM
> To: Pianotech List
> Subject: Re: Oscar Peterson
>
>
> At 05:26 -0600 26/12/07, Kent Swafford wrote:
>
> >Oscar Peterson was the greatest. My favorite record of his was a
> >solo piano album from the 70's called "Tracks". If you happen to
> >have iTunes, you can listen to the excerpt from "A Little Jazz
> >Exercise", which still blows me away after 30 years.
>
> ...and here's a particularly great clip with the great Niels Pedersen
> on bass, whom we also sadly lost in 2005.
>
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpWx62Mkl24&feature=related>
>
> My daughter has just suffered an instant conversion to jazz piano
> after hearing me play Oscar Peterson (whom she'd never heard of!!!)
> Fats Waller and Art Tatum.
>
> JD
>